She shouldn’t have wanted to smile, surrounded by so many bodies—so many of someone else’s loved ones who didn’t make it—but Karam had already lost so much that she thought she was owed this small spark of hope.

“What do we do now?” Arjun asked. “We came all this way and they’re gone.”

“Saxony wouldn’t have fled this place without me,” Karam said, certain. “She would have left a sign somewhere to hint at where they were going.”

“Signs can be read by anyone,” Arjun argued, unconvinced. “They wouldn’t have risked that.”

“Then it would have to be something only I know,” Karam said. “A thing only I would be able to follow.”

“Karam—”

“Stop it,” she said. “We’re not losing anyone else.”

Arjun pressed his lips together and nodded.

Asees was gone and six of Arjun’s friends had died with her. Karam and Arjun had been too late to save them, but they weren’t too late to save the others. Whatever had happened here, their army had survived, and that meant there was a chance of redemption for Karam.

She could still live up to the legacy of the Rekhi d’Rihsni her family had formed to save magic.

She could still help them win this war.

She could still save Tavia from that awful future she had seen.

Nobody else Karam loved was going to die.

“Think,” Karam said to Arjun. “What would only we see? What here would mean something to only us?”

Arjun picked up a piece of ashen wood. “Maybe they wanted to leave something and didn’t have the chance,” he said. “If they had to run from this attack, then they couldn’t have stayed around to leave signs and clues. There wasn’t time.”

“Saxony would have found a way,” Karam said.

If there was one thing in this world she still had faith in, then it was Saxony; it was the woman she loved and her inability to give up on somebody she cared about. Saxony wouldn’t have abandoned Karam, any more than Karam would have fled this forest without her, or a way for them to find each other again.

Love didn’t bow to time and neither did Saxony.

“You’re glowing,” Arjun said.

Karam wrinkled her nose. “What did you just say to me?”

“You’re glowing,” he said again.

Her nose stayed wrinkled. “I told you to think, not to be weird.”

“No,” Arjun said, sighing. “I mean you’re really glowing.”

He stretched out his arm and took Karam’s hand in his, holding it up to her face for her to see. The ring that Saxony had given her was alight. The green eyes of the serpent whose body coiled around her fingers and all the way up to her pulse were indeed glowing, just like Arjun had said.

“What is that?” he asked.